By Mike Drooger –

Murray County Central girls’ basketball coach Lucas Freeman was asked the key to their game versus the Edgerton Flying Dutchmen on January 6. His reply was, “You have to pick your poison with Edgerton. You can try to take away their inside game but they have enough decent shooters they can hurt you from the outside. Take away the perimeter game and the Dutchmen will torture you from in the paint. We can’t let Wassink (Reece) get going. She scored like 30 against us last year the first time we met. Vande Griend (Alyda) is a tough matchup. She’s tall enough to play inside but she’s also a good ball handler.”

Freeman’s assessment of EHS girls’ basketball is pretty much what all Edgerton opposing coaches would say. But knowing what to do and doing it are two very different things.

Unfortunately for MCC, but gloriously for EHS, Wassink did get going and Vande Griend did her usual little bit of everything. Emma Schoolmeester turned in the surprise performance for Coach Andrew Fleischman’s Dutchmen. Thrust into the starting lineup because Braelyn Kracht was attending an FFA convention, Schooly was 5-for-10 from the floor and added a free throw for 12 big points. She even contributed the seldom-seen, crowd-pleasing, make-the-coach-smile four-point play. The Dutchmen raced to a 36-23 lead at halftime, and then began the second half with an 8-0 run to take total control of the game en route to a 63-41 victory.

Wassink was a one woman scoring show in the first half, thanks to great ball movement by her teammates. Vande Griend, who finished with nine assists, had six passes for buckets in the first half with most of them going to Wassink. Vande Griend flashed to the high post at the elbow of the free throw lane and immediately faced the bucket. If an open lane were present, she’d attack. But most often she found Wassink on the low block for an easy bucket. Wassink had 17 of Edgerton’s first half 36 points.